Wednesday, March 9, 2011

An anonymous reader writes"What has been clear from this year's Game Developers Conference is that consoles are beginning to show their age. With nothing beyond a possible Nintendo update on the horizon, developers at this year's GDC have turned their eyes to the PC. The article includes three videos that give a fantastic insight into where PC graphics are headed, including a version of Epic's Unreal engine, Crytek's Cryengine 3, and DICE's Frostbite 2 engine. Considering that these leaps in eye candy are only possible with the current state of PC graphics, we wonder how long consoles will be the target platform for development of blockbuster games."

He was wanted by police in Galati over cheque fraud but fled to Piatra-Neamt, a town 250km away. He must now serve eight years in jail for the conviction he got in 2001. In addition, police are now investigating him for using a false identity.

Margaret Hartmann — Here's a story that should make your next dentist visit seem delightful by comparison. During a misconduct hearing yesterday, British dentist Matthew Walton was accused of regularly burping and farting in front of patients because he thought it was "a big joke." According toThe Daily Mail, dental nurse Nicola Groom testified that he also discriminated against patients:

"If the patients had status, if for example a doctor came in, he was fine, he would talk normally, respectfully. But if someone was, just to give an example, if they were from a council estate, his whole attitude was completely different ... He would show them no respect and the way he would speak to them – it was appalling really." She added: "If they didn't speak very good English, he would ask for their money before he treated them. He never took it off them in the surgery as long as he saw they had money to pay."

Margaret Hartmann — Here's a story that should make your next dentist visit seem delightful by comparison. During a misconduct hearing yesterday, British dentist Matthew Walton was accused of regularly burping and farting in front of patients because he thought it was "a big joke." According toThe Daily Mail, dental nurse Nicola Groom testified that he also discriminated against patients:

"If the patients had status, if for example a doctor came in, he was fine, he would talk normally, respectfully. But if someone was, just to give an example, if they were from a council estate, his whole attitude was completely different ... He would show them no respect and the way he would speak to them – it was appalling really." She added: "If they didn't speak very good English, he would ask for their money before he treated them. He never took it off them in the surgery as long as he saw they had money to pay."

For more than 20 years, candidates running for office in the Hillbrook-Tall Oaks Civic Association inAnnandale have stood, waved and received polite applause at the annual meeting in June. Everyone votes, eats ice cream, chats with neighbors and goes home.

This past election, to make the meeting move faster, only the names and qualifications of the candidates were announced. Running for president, Ms. Beatha Lee was described as a relatively new resident, interested in neighborhood activities and the outdoors, and who had experience in Maine overseeing an estate of 26 acres.
Though unfamiliar with Lee's name, the crowd of about 50 raised their hands, assuming that the candidate was a civic-minded newcomer. These days, it's hard to get anyone to volunteer to devote the time needed to serve as an officer. The slate that Lee headed was unanimously elected. Everyone ate ice cream, watched a karate demonstration and went home.
Only weeks later did many discover that their new president was, in fact, a dog.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011) — Many Americans are skeptical about whether the world's weather is changing, but apparently the degree of skepticism varies systematically depending on what that change is called.

Though well on its way to joining the Dodo, one of the internal combustion engine's advantages over itsplug-in competition is refuel time -- it only takes a few minutes to gas up, but you're talking hours for anEV to top off its batteries via a standard 220 / 240-volt socket. This fact is not lost on Nissan, as it just revealed plans to offer a higher-rate charger in its 2012 Leaf -- the current model's 3.3kW charger needs eight hours to power up -- in order to better compete with the Ford Focus Electric's three to four hour charge time courtesy of its 6.6kW. And all you early adopters won't be "orphaned," as 2011 model Leafs can be retrofitted with the new electrics -- no word if Daddy Warbucks will be footing the bill.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

We here at Engadget are all about helping the less fortunate, so Mitsubishi Electric's latest innovation in elevator tech has us all warm and fuzzy. The new interface allows for blind users -- and presumably lazy users -- to select their destination floor by voice, with a subsequent announcement when they arrive. Additionally, the system kicks in whenever it detects a wheelchair, replacing the potentially difficult process of reaching high buttons with the simple act of speaking. No word on whether the system works in English just yet or if it'll make it to the States, but you might want to brush up on your Japanese either way.

An anonymous reader writes"A simple $30 GPS jammer made in China can ruin your day. It doesn't just affect your car's navigation — ATM machines, cell phone towers, plane, boat, train navigation systems all depend upon GPS signals that are easily blocked. These devices fail badly — with no redundancy. These jammers can be used to defeat vehicle tracking products — but end up causing a moving cloud of chaos. The next wave of anti-GPS devices include GPS spoofers to trick or confuse nearby devices."

EnergyScholar writes"Sir Richard Dearlove, former Intelligence Chief of MI6, credits WikiLeaks with helping spark revolutions in the Middle East, in (what was supposed to be) an off-the-record speech. 'I would definitely draw parallels at the moment between the wave of political unrest which is sweeping through the Middle East in a very exciting and rather extraordinary fashion and also the WikiLeaks phenomenon. Really, what ties these two events together, and of course a number of other events, is the diffusion of power, away from the states and the empowerment of individuals, and small groups of individuals, by technology,' he said."

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2011) — As the debate about healthcare in the United States rages, four insightful articles in the March 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine strive to add reasoned arguments and empirical research findings to the dialog.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 07, @03:51PM

from the carl-approved dept.

The people at National Geographic have built a house modeled after the one in the movie UP! for a new TV series called How Hard Can It Be?. The house flew for about an hour and reached 10,000 feet. There was no report of anyone spotting The Beast of Paradise Falls.